r/Wellthatsucks • u/mattloaf666 • 9h ago

Reading festival 2026

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u/Demoliri 7h ago

Wacken in Germany was also like this. My last time was in 2010 and in the camp site after the last day the fire brigade were just driving from one campsite to the other putting out tent fires. People were stacking up hundreds of tents into a pile and setting them alight. The whole area stunk of melted plastic, it was horrid. I was also there in 2005 and 2007, and it wasn't quite as bad, but still a mess after the last day.

Needless to say I haven't been back to Wacken since, and I instead go to smaller festivals.

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u/anondreamitgirl 7h ago

They need to start introducing large fines for littering

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u/Demoliri 6h ago

Incredibly difficult to enforce I think. Without mass surveillance, how will they know who each tent belongs to? And even if they have video of them abandoning their tent, they then need to ID them and track them down. Then there's the issue of international guests, which make up a huge percentage of these bigger festivals.

In theory I would love it to be punished, but I have no idea how to make that work.

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u/retrojoe 4h ago

I went to a festival in Australia where it was normal to bring couches. You had to pay a deposit, they tagged the couch, and you got the deposit back when you proved you were leaving with it.

Granted, tents are more fiddly, but you get the idea.